


Say the Word (your wish is my command)

by IneffableDoll



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Acts of Kindness, Crawly is whipped for this guy, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Divine punishment, Falling In Love, Fluff and Humor, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Muteness, One Shot, The First Millenia, almost, like he's so far gone it's almost not funny, the entire setting is a forest for some reason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:13:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23318161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IneffableDoll/pseuds/IneffableDoll
Summary: “Talk to me,” Crawly said simply, barely masking the concern (not at all masking the concern, that is).Aziraphale shook his head painfully.“Why? Why won’t you?”And finally, finally, Aziraphale met Crawly’s eyes. Actual, genuine eye contact. And he tapped his throat with his fingers, tapped his mouth, and slowly shook his head. Never breaking said eye contact.The gears in Crawly’s head ground to a halt. “You...can’t.”-------Aziraphale was punished for lying about the flaming sword in an unconventional way – by stealing him of his voice so he may never lie again. When Crawly learns of this, he has a sudden and unrelated, totally demonic idea. Super sinister, really. Yeah.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 32
Kudos: 287





	Say the Word (your wish is my command)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy,” cuz why not?

It was just short of five centuries into the world’s existence when Crawly met the angel again.

He shouldn’t have been nearly as pleased as he was, but he was, and he simply chalked it up to demonic excitement over the prospect of doing something mischievous. See if he couldn’t cause some trouble for Heaven, wily serpent that he was.

There wasn’t much in the way of civilization yet, but it would come. For now, the civilization of erupting wildlife was good enough, and Crawly had been quite absorbed in observing the forest he’d found himself in when he spotted the angel.

The name came to him, half a dream from a memory not so long ago, yet too long ago. “Aziraphale.”

The angel looked up with a start. He was sitting on a log in a cream robe, looking peaceful, but as soon as he saw Crawly…

Fear. There was fear in his eyes.

Crawly deflated slightly. It made sense, it did; Crawly was a demon, Aziraphale was an angel. Be a strange world if angels and demons went around NOT being afraid - or at least unnerved - by the opposite’s presence. Still, their interaction on the wall had been nearly pleasant. Nearly comfortable (rather firmly both, actually, but he wasn’t about to say that – even in his own head). It struck Crawly all in that moment that the angel had probably been humoring him, maybe even tricking him into letting his guard down.

Well, it was certainly up now.

Aziraphale said nothing, but, his gaze steady on the ground, he stood wearily and brushed a hand over his robes to dislodge the sweaty wrinkles.

“Been a while. Humans seem to be coming along alright.” Crawly could’ve kicked himself (and he would later, in private).

Aziraphale still didn’t reply, but at least he was looking at him now, tentatively. A rabbit afraid to look a bear in the eye.

“There’re more of them now,” Crawly continued. As if the angel wouldn’t know. “Been around to check i- that is, trying my hand at some more tempting. They’re an interesting lot.” Bless his mouth for existing. Should have miracled it away ages ago.

Aziraphale had given a small smile at the mention of tempting – an all-too-knowing one – but it slipped when Crawly stopped talking. The demon looked at him expectantly, an eyebrow raised.

The silence was thick as the humidity.

“Right. So.” Crawly couldn’t keep the irritation from creeping into his voice. “I’ll leave you to your important, er, log duties. See ya.” He didn’t catch Aziraphale’s expression and stalked away. Didn’t matter; he only made it about seven steps before angrily turning back to see that Aziraphale had made to follow after him, eyebrows furled, and mouth open like caught in a sentence.

“Well?” Crawly waited, but the angel looked down, and up, and anywhere that wasn’t Crawly’s fiery countenance.

Crawly sighed dramatically before sauntering over to stand imposingly before Aziraphale, who looked up with concern at something past the demon’s shoulder.

“Look.” Aziraphale jumped far too dramatically at the tone. “I get that you don’t want to talk to a demon and all, but not even one word?” It really, really shouldn’t have bothered him, and he definitely shouldn’t have said anything, but it did, and he did, and now Aziraphale was looking down with wide, sorrowful eyes. And, yeah, this wouldn’t do.

“Whatever. Doesn’t matter.” Crawly tried to backpedal and looked up between the canopy to a tinge of blue sky. “Just...thought you were different.” A pause. “From the other angels. All bloody _rude_ as Heaven.”

Aziraphale released a half-disapproving, half-hollow sort of breath.

“Anyway, I guess I’ll just…yeah.” Crawly brought his eyes back down as he stepped back but was not prepared for the expression on Aziraphale’s face. 

(Definitely not expecting the tears.)

“Um.”

The angel blinked rapidly.

“Talk to me,” Crawly said simply, barely masking the concern (not at all masking the concern, that is).

Aziraphale shook his head painfully.

“Why? Why won’t you?”

And finally, _finally_ , Aziraphale met Crawly’s eyes. Actual, genuine eye contact. And he tapped his throat with his fingers, tapped his mouth, and slowly shook his head. Never breaking said eye contact.

The gears in Crawly’s head ground to a halt. “You...can’t.”

The angel nodded with visible relief, but still tensed.

“You can’t talk.”

Another nod.

“Why?”

Aziraphale considered this for a moment, then held his hands in front of him, grasping an invisible handle. He made a sideways motion with it, fluttering his fingers over the invisible tool, then looked to Crawly expectantly.

He, for one, was trying not to laugh - the situation didn’t call for it, but this looked nothing short of ridiculous. Still, he got it. “Flaming sword. The one you gave away?”

Aziraphale beamed and moved on to his next set of charades - a game that Crawly definitely would not take credit for in the future - which involved pointing at the sky a lot and holding a light over his head.

“God?”

The angel pointed to his lips, then to the sky.

“You spoke to God. About the sword?”

That was evidently correct, for Aziraphale was blazing ahead, clearly excited at being understood. Pointed to lips, shaking his head, shrugged.

Yeah, what? Crawly didn’t catch that at all.

It took a few more goes, a few variations, but he finally caught on. “Wait, you’re saying you lied? To God? When She asked you about the sword?”

At least the angel had the decency to look ashamed about it.

Crawly roared with laughter, entirely unbidden, but his pleasure and amusement were undeniable. “You - you actually just…” He wiped a tear from his eye, beaming. “You lied to God. To GOD. All-knowing, omnipotent, and you lied to Her face!” He doubled over with laughter again.

Aziraphale playfully swatted him on the arm, and they both jumped at the contact. Aziraphale took three strides backward, crestfallen.

“Right.” Crawly straightened himself up, feeling the laughter die in his chest. “So, you not being able to talk is because you lied to God about the flaming sword, then? Her divine punishment?”

Aziraphale gave a terse nod and made a few more movements.

“If you can’t talk, you can’t lie,” Crawly surmised simply, and Aziraphale nodded once more.

Crawly felt a lurch of anger - jealousy even. I mean, what the Heaven? Ask a couple of questions, into the pot of boiling sulfur you go! Unforgiveness and an eternity of suffering for the utter transgression of a bit of curiosity. But you lie to Her blatantly? No Falling for you, certainly not. Just make you a little quieter. Poor, _poor_ angel. It wasn’t fair, but then, had Heaven ever been known for justice? (it hadn’t, but it would be, in time, without deserving it).

He took a deep breath to steady himself. He could already taste the fury that was searing him, but he knew even then that he wasn’t actually angry at Aziraphale.

He’d let it out at some plants later.

“Sorry.” The disgusting word finally was released, imbued with rather more meaning than the angel could know.

Aziraphale shook his head quickly, looking irate - but his gaze was on the middle distance, so Crawly speculated it wasn’t the demon that was bothering him.

“Well. That’s more than a little frustrating, I bet,” Crawly commented, trying to seem more sympathetic. He didn’t really know what to say, especially knowing Aziraphale couldn’t respond to it. Verbally, anyway. “Wonder if there’s some other way we - you, that is - could communicate. You know, visually maybe?”

Aziraphale gave him a look.

“Not with limbs.” Crawly let a smirk slide onto his lips, even though he had no idea where he was going with this. “Something closer to the way we talk.” He shrugged. “I dunno. Thinking aloud.”

And he was, but what Aziraphale didn’t know was that the thinking hardly stopped there. Nay, it kept turning, chugging, wondering. There had to be something, somehow, somewhere. A way to do this, a way to help make this easier for Azir- for Crawly. Easier for Crawly to understand. A selfish want, obviously.

Crawly, Demon of Hell, Harbinger of Imagination, Snake of Eden, and Tempter of Original Sin, came up with an idea. An idea so devious it just might work.

He hadn’t realized he was grinning like a fool until his eyes refocused and saw Aziraphale staring at him, puzzled. A question in his expression, clear enough.

“I’ve got something very evil I must attend to,” Crawly explained hastily, forcing his expression into something more Snark and less Dork. “You’ll know it when you see it. Gotta go work on this immediately - devilish plans afoot, you see.” He waited for Aziraphale to give a hesitant and deeply confused nod before walking off, grinning demonically as his plans twisted and turned in his head.

~

It took a while to catch on. Much, much longer than Crawly had hoped it would, but it did, eventually.

At first, Crawly wasn’t sure if he should take credit for inventing written language. There wasn’t anything clearly evil about it and the Mesopotamians seemed rather keen, and he couldn’t tell Hell the real reason he’d come up with it (he didn’t even tell himself). But there’s no way Downstairs wouldn’t notice, so he reported to Hell, detailing all his evil plans for using literary devices to spread discord and false information through generations of humans. A domino effect of evil, you see. The humans would believe what the words said, so long as they were old words – kingdoms would rise and tumble under the influence of literacy.

A bit complex for Hell’s simplistic taste, but in lieu of a commendation, he wasn’t reprimanded, so that was a win.

So, he waited for written language to catch on with the patience of, well, probably not a saint, but something akin (he went to Egypt shortly after Mesopotamia, as well as China, and set roots there, too; all the writings were different, which was only a little annoying with having to learn all the verbal tongues already, but alas – Aziraphale would have options, at least. Not that that was the point).

During all this, he did not think about the angel. Not too much, anyway. But he hoped rather vulnerably that Aziraphale would like it. Not that it was a gift specifically for him or anything, and he fully intended to use it for all sorts of evil means.

Still. Ya know. Hopefully he’d like it, anyway.

He met the angel again some centuries after alphabets had begun to spread, and it was, again, in a forest.

More specifically, it was Crawly’s forest. It wasn’t actually his, technically, but he liked to think of it as such. It was just a corner, really, a little area of trees and bushes and wildlife, but it was where he retreated to when he could. When there wasn’t tempting to do, jobs from Hell to carry on. This was still the early days, late in the first millennia. Not enough people to keep him genuinely busy, as he would be later.

Crawly was lounging - quite the fan of Sloth, himself - when he heard the rustling sounds of footsteps. He was attuned to the walks of the wildlife he’d come to expect of the area. Knew the difference between giant clawed paws, dainty hooves, tiny hops.

This was the walk of a human, but the presence was different. As soon as he realized this, he relaxed and smiled. Which, yeah, should've been the biggest red flag of the universe, that an angel’s presence would relax him rather than the opposite, but we’re not here to examine feelings right now.

(Or ever. Crawly’s pretty good at not examining feelings.)

Aziraphale stumbled across the clearing almost with a look of surprise on his face, looking around the place reverently. Crawly was reminded of how the angel had looked at Eden, before - the expression was nearly identical. That made Crawly severely uncomfortable and yeah, definitely not thinking about that.

“Angel. Hey.” Crawly broke the silence and entered the clearing. He assumed Aziraphale had known he was there, but the angel started so badly he dropped what he was holding. It was just a stick, but still, he bent down in a rush to pick it up and clutched it defensively. After a beat, he let his shoulders relax, and he waved a hand to beckon Crawly closer.

The demon obliged, holding back his smile and swaying his dislodged hips to stand by Aziraphale. “How’ve you been, then? End of the first millennia treating you well?” he said as he approached, as it’d been roughly nine centuries since Eden now, but he was cut off from saying more when the angel excitedly bent down to clear away a spot on the ground of grass.

“What’re you…” But Aziraphale put a finger to his lips and brandished his stick.

And in the dirt, he wrote.

It wasn’t English. None of this was in English, obviously. It was a pictorial language derived from Sumerian that, in time, would give way to much more complex characters and alphabets. About two centuries past the current moment, Mesopotamians would learn how to make their writing more permanent with clay and reeds – but that’s not strictly relevant. We’re not there yet (and, as The Author doesn’t want to research this too much, we’ll leave it there).

Please suffice to say that the translation of what Aziraphale wrote was simple: “Thank you.”

Crawly watched with fascination, with awe, really. The swoops of the shapes he formed, the careful way Aziraphale created each symbol with care in the dirt. The symbols Crawly invented (er, prodded humans to invent, rather). And the angel looked up at Crawly then, the excitement in his soul leaking out of every orifice on his face.

“You learned to write, then,” Crawly commented hollowly, forcing the giddy _something_ in his chest down. Unfortunate side effect of never examining his feelings is that he had no idea what he was feeling right now. “Don’t know what you’re thanking me for, though.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes and pointed to the letters.

“Yeah, I read it.”

He pointed again, to each individual symbol.

“What, for making writing?” Crawly shrugged as though it wasn’t a big deal, as though Aziraphale’s fond smile wasn’t absolutely everything, as though every agonizing day spent trying to get the humans to like writing when every day was a struggle for survival wasn’t suddenly worth it. He settled for saying something else. “Lots of potential there, for evil. All sorts of misdeeds to do in writing.”

Aziraphale looked away and wrote another word. “Nice.” Which Crawly promptly swiped away with his foot.

“‘Nah, told you, all sorts of demonic work to be done with this. If it helps you communicate, then...unintended side effect is all.”

He huffed unbelievingly and spelled out something now, a little bit longer. “I knew it right away.”

It took Crawly a minute to understand, before he remembered his own, unguarded words from last time. _You’ll know it when you see it._

Crawly struggled for a good eight seconds to think of a witty reply and came up with the clever response of, “Ngk.” It would become his trademark in time.

The angel gave him A Look that Crawly didn’t like it all (yet filed away in his memory to revisit later) and nodded, letting the subject go.

They parted ways somewhat awkwardly, but Crawly felt something in his chest that went with Aziraphale as he flew off, and if Crawly picked up a white feather that loosed from the angel’s wing and tucked it in his robe, then that was his business.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! I feel like this is a concept that could go a lot farther than what I’ve written here, but I’m not sure if I care to take the time to explore it. If you write anything based on this concept, please let me know and I’ll link it!


End file.
